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THE WRITER'S LIFE
By
STEVEN TRAVERS
COPYRIGHT (2011) by STEVEN TRAVERS
I dedicate this book to Tony Salinn, whose talent and passion for baseball writing will be remembered.
--Steven Travers
DUSTCOVER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER TITLE PAGE
Prologue: A Slice of the Writer's Life 14
1 Distant Replay 20
2 San Francisco Bay Area Sports 44
3 Prep Sports 56
4 Our National Pastime 89
5 Politics and History 176
6 Porn Stars 221
7 Noir 229
8 L.A. Sports 234
9 Football 243
10 Fight On! 272
11 Barry Bonds: Baseball's Superman 315
12 Book and Film Reviews 387
13 College Baseball 398
14 It's All About Me 435
15 Basketball 448
16 Ice Hockey 461
17 Tennis 463
18 Olympics 469
19 Boxing 471
20 Hollywood 472
21 Golf 499
22 Track and Field 502
23 Volleyball 504
24 The Screenplays of Steven Travers 513
25 General Sports 568
26 Novel by Steven Travers 575
27 Books by Steven Travers
28 Songs of Steve Travers 591
29 A Woman's Point of View 594
30 All In the Family 599
31 Stageplay by Steve Travers 602
32 Steven Travers On Sports Columns 619
33 Collecting 620
34 Fitness 622
35 Speeches by Steven Travers
36 Steven Travers' Resume/Biography
WOLFE IS THE ARCHETYPE
If you are an actor, you look to Brando or Olivier. A politician, if truth is your ally, Reagan or Churchill. High tech, Jobs or Gates. Business, Trump, or Rockefeller. As a writer, there are many examples to choose from, but in the modern world we look to the cutting edge, the men who forged New Journalism. Here is Tom Wolfe, who along with Hunter S. Thompson and to a lesser extent David Halberstam, made himself part of the story, gave us non-fiction that reads like a novel, and provide cutting edge social commentary.
Wolfe was a reporter, a long form magazine essayist, and cultural observer who first made sense of the 1960s, from a slightly conservative, pseudo-Southern point of view. He learned our language and wrote like we thought.
His The Right Stuff was what all writers strive for; history, drama, patriotism, and pure excitement, page after page-turning page!
The Bonfire of the Vanities had a way, like the sports columns of Jim Murray, of shining a light on the unimpressives of society without naming their names. It left its targets naked in the streets.
After Bonfire, the world waited with baited breath for Wolfe’s next work, which came in the form of 1998’s A Man in Full. The critics may not have gotten it. This book did not resonate as Bonfire had. But it was was a Best Seller. In this reviewer’s humble opinion, A Man in Full, like Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, is a monumental work that only those smart enough to understand it . . . understood.
It excoriates liberal society and stupidity without being obvious about it, but in between cutting line after cutting line, the knowing reader nods his head and says, “right on . . . so true . . . say it.”
The story is not the message. It tells the tale of divergent personalities seemingly without much in common who eventually find each other. There is the former white Georgia Tech superstar football legend, now a respected businessman, living off the legend; the black current Georgia tech star living off a world bound and determined to give him anything he wants – girls, cars, money, corruption – because he is a star, and also to appease latent, in-the-past prejudice. The old legend observes this stupidity with a jaundiced eye. Society run amock, priorities out of whack, a Wolfe specialty. Then we get the poor white fellow trying to make ends meet to support his family, the world’s-turned-upside-down case. In the 19th Century he was the black sharecropper. Now he is the blue collar white, probably the man attracted to the Tea Party, who wonders why so much immorality is allowed to not just exist, but to be rewarded. Every sin and horror committed by whites against blacks in the age of lynching is now completely turned around in slavish a here-have-this world by white football boosters who give-give-give to a dreadlocked black football phenom who cannot spell his name and despoils willing white girls seemingly happy to give up the last vestige of rightousness in their souls, in order to appease the injustices of their grandfathers. Only Wolfe tells this much better than I can. He gives it you in the best subversive manner.
It is the world in which society, the media, the intellectual elite love to create myths, such as the cutting edge all-knowing black man or family of so many commercials, put-upon while he calmly explains to the dingbat white the latest in cell phone technology, or smart money investing, or the latest in technological gadgetry; all apparently beyond the ability of most white minds to comprehend except for the smart black fellow who steers them in the correct direction. The kind of message that so many people observe and either say out loud, “Hey, that’s a lie,” or never think about, but understand this fact in the back of their minds, inculcating their choices in politics and consumerism.
Wolfe reaches those people who have this nagging suspicion somewhere when they observe the world around them and say, “Something is wrong here!”
But the novel’s message is in its study of stoicism, a mystic, ancient religion related to Christianity, and essentially the attitude of martyrs who were crucified and tortured in the name of the One True God.
This is Wolfe’s way of saying that while all this immorality and all these lies may indeed surround us, we still know the truth and the truth shall make us free. It is not necessary to explain the truth to others, to justify ourselves, to even make it popular. It is a manifest truth that the righteous know. Whether the unrightous know it is immaterial. God knows it, and that is all that matters. The world is just window dressing. The righteous look at the unrighteous and just pray for them. All their money and gifts of this world mean nothing, and the righteous man knows it. Thy righteous man suffers for his knowledge and his goodness. He does so without complaint, stoically.
Wolfe has chosen a subject he must surely have known would go over the heads of most except for . . . the righteous. We get it.
Whether anybody else gets it is . . . immaterial!
BO: AN INSPIRATION
The year was 1973. I was 14, entering Redwood High School near San Francisco. I read Bo: Pitching and Wooing by Maury Allen. Today, almost 40 years later, this is a book I absolutely consider to be one of the five best sports books ever written, and the genesis of my own writing career. What a long, strange trip it’s been.
Reading Pitching and Wooing occurred simultaneously with my befriending Brad Cole. Brad grew up in the Los Angeles area but moved to Marin County when his folks were divorced. San Franciscans despise everything about L.A. I never bought this garbage. I was a huge USC Trojans fan, thought the music of The Beach Boys to be a siren song, and was fascinated with Los Angeles. Brad painted a glorious portrait of life in the Southland: beautiful girls at the beach, packed throngs at Dodger Stadium, the glories of Jim Murray and the Los Angeles Times. I could practically taste the Dodger Dogs. This came as I read Pitching and Wooing, which probably painted a nostalgic picture of the Sunset Strip, circa 1962, more thoroughly than any other writer with the possible exception of another Bo Belinsky biographer, Pat Jordan (“Once he Was An Angel,” Sports Illustrated, 1972).
Between Brad’s tales and Maury’s book I was transplanted to the Whiskey-a-Go-Go, a swank Sinatra Hollywoodland of gorgeous babves, hot nights, happening night clubs, and exciting baseball. Everything that made life worth living at that time. For a lonely only-child without a semblance of a girlfriend, it was a vicarious thrill so . . . thrilling . . . that it in some ways was almost better than actual real life. Writing cannot be better than that.
I read it many times, memorized it. I was a heckuva good baseball player and figured some day I would play professionally. To me, Bo: Pitching and Wooing, Ball Four, and Jordan’s seminal A False Spring, were primers on pro baseball and minor league life. I knew what I would find when I got there.
Fast forward to 1981 when indeed I did sign with the St. Louis Cardinals. Yes, minor league life was exactly like that panted by Maury Allen, Pat Jordan and Jim Bouton. I lived it to the hilt. Hedonistic pleasures, girlies in small town Southern bars, fun, fun, fun. No, I was not living within The Word of Christ. I was a sinner. I was a child who had not yet put away, as Paul wrote to the Cornthians, “childish things.”
That would come eventually. First, there was Bo Belinksy, the next step.
Aftrer baseball, I graduated from USC, served in the Army, attended law school, and became a sports agent. I was unfulfilled. It was 1994. Being a sports agent seemed almost like being a pimp. I spent most of my time arranging for my client, a married Pittsburgh Pirates’ outfielder, to meet his mistress flown in, by our firm, to various Nationbal League cities. I knew I was not doing God’s work.
Then Bo Belisnky entered my life, in real life. We started representing him, an old-time player popular in card shows and the memorabilia market. We made no money off Bo but it was fun to have him around and hear all his stories.
Bo started bragging about how “Marty and Bobby” and Oliver Stn and this agent and that producer wanted to make a movie about his life. A light went on in my head.
“I shall write the screenplay,” I declared, and I did.
This was basically like stirring up a hornet’s nest, a Hollywood story for a different day. Staying on point, I contacted Maury Allen and Pat Jordan., Amazingly, both completely cooperated with me, allowing me to write a screenplay based on their two books about Bo’s life without charging me, telling me if it ever gets made we would work out the particulars then. Unbelievable.
So I wrote a script called Once He Was an Angel. It was optioned by a producing group associated with Frank Capra III and Frank Capra Jr., and received kudos in a screenwriting contest. Maury Povich wanted to make a movie about Bo. But Bo passed away in 2001 and the movie was never made.
The best news was that Bo, the wild playboy of the 1960s, became a Christian, in large part because of his ex-teammate Albie Pearson, a preacher. He earned his wings in the end. Thsi happened as I, too, turned from my sins and became a Christian.
I owe a huge debt to Maury Allen. When I wrote that screenplay with his help, it got me out of the immoral world of sports agency representation, and turned mne into a writer, my life’s passion. Screenplays in Hollywood, 1994-99. Prep sportswriter, L.A. Times, 1999-2000. Magazine and San Franciscio Examiner columnist, 1999-2001. Author, 18 books, 2002-2011. Not bad. It started with Bo: Pitching and Wooing.
When I wrote Angels Essential (2007), an Angels history, I devoted a large part of the book to Bo and my experiences. Later Bob Case, the Angels’ clubhouse boy in 1962 and a lifelong friend of Bo’s and many Angels, told me of all Angels chroniclers, I captured the ambience of the times better than any other writer. Nice words, but I was only paying homage to Maury Allen and Pat Jordan.
Bo: Pitching and Wooing was not a huge best seller. It did not approach Ball Four, which came out a few yers earlier and probably inspired it (the tell-all sports tome). Bo said he made about 30 grand out of it, but he exaggerated a lot. Nevertheless, as far as I am concerned it stands the test of time as a sports book of monumental greatness. It is simply one of the most entertaining, engaging, fanciful adventures ever committed to the page. Read it now and you will agree.
STUNNING LITERARY ACHIEVEMENT
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini was first published in 2003, the height of the War on Terror, and the year the U.S. invaded Iraq (Osama bin Laden was already rendered irrelevant, the Taliban forced to flee in Afghanistan). I knew it was a huge hit, a big seller, and thought to be a big literary achievement. I did not buy it or pay much attention to it. I just figured it was a form of literay “affirmative action.” Because it was written by an Afghani about Afghanistan, it had to be sympathetic to the Muslim view, painting a pictiure of these poor Third World folk the Left thought we were colonizing. Surely it did not measure up to “real” literature like Joseph Conrad or Charles Dickens.
I was wrong.
I had a gift certificate. After filling my basket with my usual faire - political biographies, war history, sports – I figured, what the heck. It sat on my shelf for a while until I finally said, again, what the heck, and read it.
Great book.
It is not literary “affirmative action.” It is also not some Muslim sop about the poor Afghanis trembling at the feet of the American Empire. It in fact is more like a good reason for us to have gone into Afghanistan in the first place. Kosseini came from an upper middle class Kabul family, respected. His mother left and he was left with his stern father. He befriended the son of a family servant. The boy was raped by a sadistic neighbor boy. Hosseini’s character watched, afraid to come to his aid. This haunts the character and propels the book’s theme, which is about the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, and with it the wealth and influence of his father until they are forced out and move to America. It transforms itself to Hawyard, California, where the main character falls in love with an Afghani girl who has been ostracized for being too Westernized. Eventually the character must return to Kabul to fulfill a promise and gain some redemption for letting his friend be raped without intervening. He confronts the sadist, who is now a Taliban soldier who idolized Adolph Hitler (a big hero in the Muslim world, a fact the Western press hates to admit, which does not change the fact it simply is true).
Overall, I would almost call The Kite Runner conservative, certainly pro-American without being overt about it. It is by no means some kind of Left-wing clap-trap, which explains why it sold well. Liberalism gets no ratings and sits unsold because when people see it they reJect it. I know I sure do!
TO BE OR NOT TO BE PALIN
The problem with Sarah Palin is that the first requirement of her supporters is to defend her against the putrid unimpressives who dump all over her. This is not necessary with George W. Bush. With Bush, a muscular Republican argument says he found two hells on Earth, gathered all the terrorists into a trap he set in these places at a time of his choosing, and once they were there, killed them. With Ronald Reagan, his stupid detractors are merely irrelevances, tiny men and feminist pizzants, in the shadow of Cold War triumph greater even than Caesar Augustus’s.
But Palin is a media creation. I like her a lot. I do not think she will be President, I do not think she will run. I probably would not vote for her in a Republican Primary. I love her as a gadly, a stocking horse, but a stocking horse is not Reagan or even Bush.
I read Going Rogue. Nice enough bio. She is a common sense conservative, smart, Christian, a historian, but she is not William Buckley or Rush Limbaugh, either. Hers is an interesting life of purpose, of over-achievement and adventure as befits her Alaska. Had McCain won and Palin served as V.P. for four or eight years, she would have been ready and probably elected. Absent this achievement on her resume, she will not. Perhaps she will be a V.P. candidate again in 2012, or maybe a cabinet member, or maybe win a Senate seat, and in 2016 or 2020 will be Presidential. Not in 2012. She probably could be beat Barack Obama, but the Republican field is stronger than Acorn Man, and she cannot overcome Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee or Newt Gingrich.
The book is a nice compilation of rural experience, prep basketball, Alaska insight, and actually strong national philosophy, but I am as well versed and understanding of philosophy and history as Palin (which is actually a compliment to Palin, modesty aside).
I must add this. I knew little about her when I first saw her introduced as McCain’s running mate in 2008. For about 10 seconds I was outraged, yelling at the TV, “What a terrible mistake, this girl, this nobody.” Then she began to speak. I must state unequivocally it all changed in a matter of seconds. Palin’s stunning good looks were a huge asset to her. She looks older now, beaten down by Leftist clap-trap, probably burdened by attacks on her family more than herself, but in 2008 she looked like a rogue Vogue model. I’m a guy, what can I say? She looked great and it mattered. I know history, philosophy, religion, I know this is what matters, not the cut of Sarah’s gib, but I’m sorry, my attraction to her looks made me dig her as a candidate. Just being honest.
This woman was so attractive that a Hollywood hottie portaying her on Saturday Night Live was substantially less attrractive than the real thing. A devastating sex goddess spoofed her in an X-rated film, but the difference in their looks was not all that much different, despite Sarah being older.
Palin’s appearance made me listen to her and I liked most of what she said. She was, however, not ready. She was more qualified than Acorn Man, but that means nothing. Everybody is better qualified than the “man” who is the least qualified “man” in every room he enters. But recall this.
McCain trailed in the summer of 2008. After Acorn Man tried to portray himself as a Greek god in Denver, he led by a substantial margin. But after the GOP convention and Palin’s invigorating entrance on the scene, McCain pulled ahead. On the morning of Saturday, September 15, as I drove to the USC-Ohio State game at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum with my friend Kevin and daughter Elizabeth, McCain led by 11 points!
Do not tell me Palin was not a major force. It was all because of Sarah. Then the economy dove and the lead evaporated. A “September surprise” like no other. Personally, some day I think we will discover it was the doing of George Soros (telling Barney Frank how to poison it all), but regardless it was the end of the Republicans. Enter Acorn Man and Socialism.
Now we have post-Sarah, sort of. The prevailing antidote to Obama appears to be a traditional, conservative white male. Change as in back to the way it was. This does not play to Palin’s strengths. But Going Rogue was one of the most successful Best Sellers in years, a true phenomenon. This was no accident. She is still a force. The question is, “To be or not to be” Sarah Palin? The Tear Party movement, the huge Republican blowout of 2010, and the possible further repudiation of Obama could lead to a new America in which Sarah is a leading spokesman. The road to hoe lies ahead.
YOU HAVE TO BE MENSA TO GET “ATLAS SHRUGGED”
As a fan of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged who cultivates the opinion of the occasional Randian I rarely come across, I conclude that real fans of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy and truly “get” her magnum opus border on genius level intelligence. It takes this kind of intelligence to understand it, to read its 1,000-plus pages, and realize what in fact she is telling the world.
This analyis coalesced after seeing the movie version. I liked it. So did my friend Jason, a huge Randian. Two intelligent people I saw the film with, however, were utterly confused. They needed an explanation, which did no good.
Reviews have excoriated it, as the novel was criticized, but who cares? One called it like reading Investor’s Business Daily. It in fact was dutiful to Rand, albeit taking a big chance by dividing itself into parts. We only got part one, with parts two and three, I hope/suppose, slated for the next couple of years. This was not a way to capture a film audience. It should have been a mini-series. We never see John Galt other than as a shadowy figure.
It was not a low rent picture. The movie captures the wide-open Colorado spaces of the expanding Taggart railroad. The acting is fine, although the performers are all unknowns. It details, more or less, what the world will look like if Barack Obama is allowed to stay in office absent the efforts by Republicans to stop Socialism.
But the theme of smart, creative people (think a modern Bill Gates or Donald Trump) going on strike, taking their money, businesses and entrepreneurial spirit with them, like a recalcitrant kid taking his ball and going home, is something that only Randians undserstand. Others look at me quizzically when I try to explain it. Ultimately, the film will not be a big hit for this reason. Atlas Shrugged is like inside trading, available only to those club members worthy of understanding it. What more can I say?
MAYS NOT A BAD GUY, BUT NO PRINCE, EITHER
I just read Jane Leavy’s great Mickey Mantle biography, The Last Boy. For many reasons I had to contrast it with an earlier authorized biography, Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend by James Hirsch. Where Leavy’s work was a masterpiece, Hirsch’s book was pedestrian. This leads me to analyze Mays, his life and his persona in more in-depth manner than, well, Hirsch did. Hirsch should not be faulted entirely. In getting Willie’s cooperation, he shut off much of the Mays story; basically, the bad stuff. Leavy was not inhibited by such a thing. Her subject is dead, and besides, he never hid his numerous faults.
This is a strange conundrum. By traditional standards of morality, Mays is the “better” guy. He was sober, apparently faithful to his wive(s), and by all accounts a Christian from the Bible Belt. Mantle was a drunk, a womanizer and only at the every end (which is certainly better than nothing) did he realize he was accountable to God.
But Mick was real. Mays was, well, not a bad guy, but no prince among men, either. I have personal experience with him and found him unimpressive. There is something vaguely wrong with the fellow. Start with longtime San Francisco media personality Gary Radnich, who used to specialize in receiving callers with “Mays stories,” which detailed his rudeness to fans asking for autographs on planes and public places, often infused by foul language. Mantle was just as bad.
Then there was the time I, a sports columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, approached the sainted Willie at Pacific Bell Park the night Barry Bonds hit his 500th homer. My theme was to compare Bonds’s good crowd reception with the way Boston warmed up to Ted Williams after Korea, New York to Mantle in 1961, and San Francisco to Mays in 1962 (after worshipping at the altar of the homegrown Joe DiMaggio).
Mays bristled, stating “You can’t compare Joe to me.” He listed Joe D.’s stats compared to his, and gave very detailed analysis of how he, Willie Mays, was so much better than Joe DiMaggio that, well, the “comparison” could not even be made. Now, Willie Mays may have been better than DiMaggio (although in 1969 Joe D. was voted the Greatest Living Ballplayer), but do not tell me there is no comparison. As with Mantle, DiMaggio played on World Championship teams, performing heroics and miracles in the greatest of spotlights. Fair to Willie or not, this elevates both DiMaggio and Mantle beyond the normal career staistiscs that otherwise might favor Willie. Either way, there is most definitely a “comparison.”
I interviewed Willie McCovey that same night and he was totally lacking grace when asked whether Tom Seaver might have deserved the 1969 MVP award he was hosed out of by two writers who failed to list him among their top 10 votes because pitchers already had the Cy Young. My column was titled, “No Humility Here.”
But the Mays persona was a thread that started much earlier. In 1979 I attended one of numerous Willie Mays Days hosted by the Giants. My pal Howard Gibian and I looked at each other dumbfounded while Mays made a bitter speech that sounded like Ruben “Hurricane” Carter excoriating the system for wrongfully imprisoning him. Two years later I was invited to a banquet in Reno, Nevada featuring Willie as the keynote speaker. He was the only black man in the room, as I recall. This was the theme. For some 30 or 40 minutes, Willie stood at that podium and lectured whitey for his racist ways. Not a word about “the Catch,” what Koufax’s curveball looked like up close, the intensity of the Dodger-Giant rivalry, his relationship with “Mista Leo” Durocher, or much of anything else. Instead, we we got detailed descriptions of the KKK, Birmingham, Alabama, circa 1948. The foul acts of white men toward black men in Southern towns was the highlight and lowlight of the speech. He finally concluded to tepid applause and we all departed, supposedly ashamed but rather confused.
As I contemplated the speech, it occurred to me that since I am a white man who is not a racist, this explained why I was not ashamed that other white men were. Then something else occurred to me. Mays described something that sounded like Soviet gulags or the Holocaust. How, I thought, could Willie Mays, against all odds, achieve success, fame, fortune, greatness . . . in America? What odds did he overcome? With white-hooded evil men stopping him behind every corner, yet he somehow still got to the big leagues, hit 660 homers, and forged arguably the best career ever.
Well, Willie achieved this the same way black jazz artists of the 1920s achieved fame and fortune . . . in America. Against all odds or in part because many white folk of good conscience did in fact support them. The same way Joe Louis earned $360,000 in racist America in 1938, then blamed racism in racist America for his failure to write a check and mail it to the IRS like any other tax payer, only to discover the IRS has a way of coming after such people. The way Jackie Robinson made $100,000 in speaking fees in the off-season of 1947-48, mostly from “racist” white Americans who in fact supportred him, mostly through Chrisrtian righteousness (Robinson gained so much weight on the banquet circuit he came to Spring Training out of shape in 1948, ultimately costing Brooklyn the pennant).
Which brings me to Hirsch’s book. Race was, is and apparently always will be the defining characteristic of Willie Mays. Sure, whites want to sweep a lot of their old sins under the rug, but do whites get any credit? Is America a “racist country?” Of course it is not. If it was, Michael Jordan would not be a hero, Barack Obama would not be President. If it was, blacks would have had as much chance to succeed as the Chinese dissidents nobody ever hears about who are killed or made to wallow in Communist prison camps, or murdered by African dictators, or any of a million horrors that happen in places that are not like this beautiful America we are so privileged to live in. Think about this: who are the 100 most famous, successful black people of all time? After Nelson Mandela, the other 99 (give or take) are all American citizens. Think Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Booker T. Washington, Willie Mays . . . you get the point. What a miracle! In racist America.
Back to the book. Hirsch is a good enough author. He is also prominently identified as a civil rights chronicler. Not a sportswriter, or a historian like David Halberstam. This is it in a nutshell. The Willie May story is a civil rights saga. Baseball is somewhat secondary. So what? This somehow places the white fans just a little bit on the defensive. We are not allowed to just love Willie, to admire his greatness, to argue the merits of his career with Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio. No, his story is like an Obama speech, a lecture. Well, as my conversation with Mays in 2001 demonstrated, to “compare” St. Willie with white superstars is to touch on the narrow ledge of racism. You cannot “compare” Ruth or DiMaggio to Mays. They competed only against whites. Shut the door to that nasty concept. Baseball only “started” in 1947, apparently. In the American League it “started” even later, a country club Republican league dominated by the Yankees and Tom Yawkey’s racist Red Sox.
Whites are supposed to take a sort of back seat, to sit aside and let Willie make race the dominant theme of America in the 80 years he has fought so valiantly against all the odds thrown against him while he gaily played games and made a beautiful living and absorbed adoration and fended off lilly-white autograph seekers. Gimme a break.
I do not blame Hirsch. He no doubt had to follow Willie’s direction, his over riding theme. In truth, it would not merely be impossible, but impolitic to write of Mays’s life without making race a large measure of the story. Jane Leavy or Laura Hillenbrand would surely have done so, but if allowed to work free of Mays’s cumbersome “authorization,” no doubt their take would have been different. But pose this question, if you will. Who has a better chance to succeed in racist America, Willie Mays born near “brutal Birmingham” in 1931, or a black child born in drugg-addled Compton in 2011? It takes political correctness bordering on a pure lie to say the kid born in Compton, in the shadow of the Bloods and Crips wars, has a better chance than Mays, who was born into a two-parent household and raised in a Baptist church on Sundays (when his old man was not starring in the industrial league).
But Hirsch faced further difficulty. I’ll just come out and say it. Mays is boring. I wanted to get ambience, first the New York swank of the Sinatra ‘50s, which Leavy delivered in spades in The Last Boy, then a cultured glimpse of San Francisco sophistication in the 1960s. But Mays never was part of either, so we never get this theme. It lacks. He did not drink, smoke, party. He was not part of the scene. A bio of McCovery or Orlando Cepeda may have been far livelier, as they were men about town, bon vivantes. Willie just collected his three hits, a homer, two RBIs, running catch, perfect relay to nab a man at third, then went home to play checkers.
Eventually Willie taught his Godson, Barry Bonds, to blame all his detractors and those who discovered the facts of his steroid use on racism. Typical (YouTube his dugout-lecture-with-son-as-prop during Spring Training a few years back).
I’ll take Jackie Robinson or Hank Aaron six days of the weeks and twice on Sundays. And you can compare Joe D. to Willie Mays!
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
George W. Bush’s Decision Points was not unlike his Presidency: at times brilliant, at times mediocre; at times inspiring, at times a bit infuriating. I am a lifelong conservative Republican who wanted Bush to run. I rooted for him, supported him, and found the liberals who found everything about him to be a fault to be total buffoons. That said, Bush never lived up to my view of what he could have been.
I believed he would be a great President. He had everything at his disposal to achieve this. His family and background were exemplary. I recall the first time I read his biography, around 1987. I said, “This man will be President some day.” His father was totally hosed by Ross Perot, but represented the ultimate class act. Bush’s 2000 election was repudiation of the Left. He was a complete slayer of liberal dragons; Ann Richards, Al Gore, the legacy of Bill and Hillary.
Bush wrote a biography before running for President, so he created a memoir of his White House years that focused on his Decision Points. It was an effort to show he was a decider, a leader, a man of action. A little self-serving, but he was a decider. He made tough decisions, many of which were forced on him.
Bush could have used 400 pages to excoriate those unimpressives who used all their time and energy to unsuccessfully try and bring him down. Bush outlasted them all. History will judge him a winner. I have no problem with his War on Terror. I felt Iraq was a smart strategic war. However, I cannot say it was worth it to kill almost 5,000 soldiers and about 50,000 Iraqis. If I knew ahead of time it would be that bad I probably would have objected, but it is what it is. In the end it led to freedom in Iraq and possibly a freedom revolution in the Mideast. Bush will be an old man when the judgment can be rendered.
But I completely disagree with Bush agreeing to TARP in September of 2008. This opened the door wide open for Barack Obama and Socialism. I seriously doubt we can recover from the damage Obama is rendering us in my lifetime. Bush went against his best capitalistic instincts, and we paid for it in the worst possible way.
Bush led the Republican Party to its greatest popularity since Dwight Eisenhower (and Joseph McCarthy), but like McCarthy also helped usher a short period of unpopularity. The Tea Party has restored the GOP to major heights and a bright future, but Bush has nothing to do with that.
In the end, I am a right-wing conservative and while Bush’s Texas muscularity made me believe he, too, was, in the end he was closer to the moderation of his father. He was maligned by people not worthy to lace his sandals, but failed to achieve the greatness that could have been his.
A MASTERPIECE
Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, is everything a great book can hope to be. It is why writers write. It is why books matter, the difference between writing, or even journalism, and great literature, even art. It is a tour de force, a magnum opus, ultimately a masterpiece; the kind authors strive their whole lives to achieve and virtually none ever come close to. Whereby a column, even an in-depth magazine article, comes and goes (even with the Internet), the Great Work of a Laura Hillenbrand remains timeless.
Unbroken organically manages to hit all the key elements of great story telling in the most marketable of manner, which makes it rare. If a publisher were to list all the key points needed to make a book sell, this one would surely list an X in every box. It is a historical story that reads like a novel about the greatest event ever, World War II. It centers on a man who is still alive and able to tell his tale, making it timely. It is a story of Christian redemption, an enormous market most mainstream publishers seem unable to tap into, for whatever reason. It is a sports story and a war story with an international angle. Finally, like a good screenplay, it is about the full character transformation of its main character by virtue of events he confronts; this ultimately is why it will be a spectacular movie some day.
Lou Zamperini was an Italian-American troublemaker in Southern California. He appeared to be a “dead end kid” until he discovered he had world-class distance running ability. This changed his life, provinding him first glory on the fabled track teams of legendary coach Dean Cromwell at USC, then an Olympic showcase in front of no less a world figure than Adolph Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Games.
Lou was fun-loving with an eye for the ladies and an occasional sip of liquor. Life was a lark. The Great Depression had little effect on him. Then World War II swept him into its vortex. His college background slated him for the officer corps and flight school. He finally saw action as a bombardier, a singularly dangerous assignment. He seemed to dodge the bullets, literally, until he was shot down. Whoa, Nellie.
First came the tale of harrowing survival in an open raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There was little logical reason to believe he and his fellow pilots would be found. One died in front of them. Somehow, Lou and another fellow stayed alive without food or water in the broiling sun, surrounded by sharks.
Finally, he was found and brought to safety. The end. Great story. Except he was found by the Japanese when his raft found its way straight into their hands and enemy prison camps. Then came the duration of the war, as awful a captivity as that found in Midnight Express, Papillon, or any other jail story. The degradation, much experienced at the hands of a sadistic prison torturer nicknamed The Bird, broke Lou and his mates. It would break anybody. The title, Unbroken, is revealed later. Sure, he fought The Bird and his Japanese tormentors, but small victories were overshadowed by the defeat of the human spirit.
An international track star, Zamperini’s disappearance made for big headlines. He was assumed dead. Perhaps this was the only reason he was not. The Japanese wanted to keep him for potential propaganda.
Finally the war ended and Lou, along with the other prisoners, was freed. The end. Again. A great story. But wait, the story only begins, really. At first Lou ate, drank and made merry, bathed in victory and hedonistic pleasure. Back to Hollywood and girls galore. He married a beautiful actress and lived happily ever after, for a few months or so, until The Bird and the experience infiltrated his dreams and his soul. From there, a man-made hell of alcoholism and despair. He was back in the prison, less hopeful of escape than before.
His marriage was virtually kaput, but his wife tried one last time, dragging an atheistic Lou Zamperini kicking and screaming to Billy Graham’s famed 1949 Crusade For Christ in downtown Los Angeles. Complete and total testimony on behalf of the divinity of Jesus followed. Immediately, miraculously, Lou was healed, his soul restored. Gone with the girlie mags, the bottles of booze, and the hatred. His marriage and life restored, Lou became a man in full, but his final act of redemption was to “forgive those who trespass against me,” when he returned to Japan, forgiving his former captors. The Bird remained hidden, emerging years later after the interrogators stopped searching for war criminals. Amazingly, he became a wealthy insurance exec, but never faced up to Lou or any of the others. He died in his sins a few years back. Perhaps upon meeting his Maker he found salvation through the intercessionary prayers of Lou Zamperini, who harbored no hatred for anybody.
MANCHILD CALLED THE MICK
Jane Leavy’s biography of Mickey Mantle, The Last Boy, has the vague sense of unreality. From the beginning to the end, it details an unreal story about an unreal man who, in the end, dealt with all the reality he avoided his whole life.
First we see Mickey Mantle growing up in the poverty of Commerce, Oklahoma, but none of that really affected him. He was seemingly, like Bud Wilkinson’s Sooners, put on this Earth to refute John Steinbeck’s Okie notion from The Grapes of Wrath that America and capitalism failed. Instead, he spit in the eye of Steinbeck, making his work a lie by virtue of pure, unadulterated, joyous baseball stardom. Mickey was born for greatness. There was no doubt of it. His family, his friends, his environment may have been desultory, the mines of the windswept Oklahoma planes making life a daily test of survival for his dad and uncles; all but him, anointed for future greatness.
No obstacles, nothing to overcome; he did not have to work to support his poor family, he just starred in baseball until he was discovered and immediately, it seemed, deemed to be the Next DiMaggio. Which he was, only better. His father put everything into Mick. His younger brothers got the short end of the stick. If they had their brother’s skills they never developed them. Then Mutt Mantle died. The brothers were left to their own devices, and Mantle was let loose in the fleshpots of Manhattan.
There was no real religion or moral compass in his life. Be a baseball star, period. In New York City in the Sinatra ‘50s at the height of Yankee glory. He was baseball’s Caesar Agustus. How he maintained his greatness with all the alcohol he consumed, women he slept with, and late hours he kept is a miracle of Biblical proportions. Christ spoke of putting away the things of this world. Paul wrote about “putting away childish things.” Mickey Mantle never did, until it was almost too late.
Mick and Billy Martin. Mick and Whitey Fird. Mick and Bill Skowron, Hank Bauer, Johnny Blanchard. Mick at the Copa, the Latin Quarter. Mick with a bevy of blonde sex goddesses, all while his long-suffering hometown wife raised their kids a thousand miles away.
Mantle was as good a baseball player as has ever lived. Arguments can be made: Ruth, DiMaggio, Williams, Mays, A-Rod, you name ‘em. It is subjective, but pound for pound Mantle was right there, on the biggest of all stages, the World Series, so regular an event it might as well have been printed on the Yankees’ schedule, included in season ticket packages.
There has never been a greater hero or icon. Nobody. The combination of his blonde good looks, 1950s glory days, superhuman records; here was the ultimate sports star, a symbol of American post-war victory.
Eventually, retirement, and the time to drink even more, if possible. This drew his kids into the vortex of alcoholism, with disasterous results. Never did the man need to grow up. He became the icon of the lucrative memorabilia markets. He never had to meet a real schedule or work a real job. He just signed autographs, drank with worshipful businssmen, and took lithesome chicks into his bed (trying for the author as a young lass, only to be turned down, perhaps became he was too drunk to carry out his lusts).
Finally, the inevitable liver disease and death, which was the only shadow he always faced, after thinking he would die young like his dad and uncles, even though he never faced the black lung they did in the mines. Ultimately, he was a man of Shakespearean fate, irony. The Last Boy finally realized the error of his ways and used his fame to warn the world of the dangers of drinking. It is said he had a big impact, worthy of the first truly deserved hero worship of his life, as he faced death in 1995.
Leavy, who wrote a solid Sandy Koufax bio in 2002, is a gifted sportswriter who understands and captures the New York ambience, a key to so many great stories. She writes a different story. Mick’s tale is a well-told one. She does not delve into every game, every friend, every big homer, but rather, like George W. Bush’s Decision Points, concentrates on chosen moments defining Mantle’s life. The title is apropos and does what a great book is supposed to do, which is transfer the reader from a very different modernity into a time and place that is no more, no matter the nostalgic attempt to re-live it. It strips much of the veneer, as well, in particular demonstrating that Mick may have been molested by a female babysitter as a child, perhaps explaining why he could only be described as a sex addict.
“MEN OF KENT” A STORY OF TIMELESS GRACE
In an age of the second rate, the low rent and the umimpressive; of pornography, video games, text messaging and other irrelevancies of the human spirit, comes a beautiful, graceless book, Men of Kent by Rick Rinehart.
It is on the face of it the story of a great private school rowing squad that once won the most prestigious championship outside of the Olympics, This is a mere façade, for it is in fact a gauzy, melancholy story of how in life sometimes we are privileged to be part of something astounding. The beauty of the story, really, is that it is not something wholly unusual. Every year various teams win championships, and Rinehart’s team was not really any more unusual than any number of these champions. The beauty is that in being a story that could be repeated in a thousand places, it speaks to the universal human spirit. One need not be a rower, attend a New England private school, or done much of anything particularly resembling what Rinehart did, in order to relate to it. Personally it brought back vivid, haunting memories of my own membership on the best high school baseball team in America in 1977. We were a public school, our story embued by a sunny California disposition a world removed from East Coast eltism, but that did not matter. My teammates, our camaraderie, our demanding coach, and the thrill of victory; that was the same.
Rinehart was a member of the 1972 Kent School rowers who first won the American national championship, then the fabled Henley Royal Regatta in England. While rowing and football are two very different sports, the best way to describe this accomplishment would be to imagine, for instance, De La Salle High School of Concord, California, the best prep grid program in the nation over the past two decades, winning the Rose Bowl. Maybe winning the Rose Bowl in a world in which there is no NFL, but the would-be pros also compete on club teams in a play-off format against De La Salle. Thus does the book’s title resonate, for they were indeed men, not boys. The tale, however, decribes boys as they became men, and ultimately gentlemen.
Rinehart infuses us with history and back story. He does an excellent job of telling us the history of rowing, its equipment and accoutrement, without making it read like an encyclopedia. He tells us of Father Frederick Herbert Sill, the founder and soul of Kent School. Of such men are countries made great. Sill, a man of Christian faith, may well be regarded as a saint. His story has been told before; the beloved school master, the patriarch who presides over decades of graduating classes at a charming private school. The fact that there are many Father Sills who have influenced the lives of countless young people does not reduce Sills, or any other Father Silles of this world, one iota. These are unsung heroes. These are men of temperance and character, the sort of indiviuduals who an atheist meets and, if he is honest with himself, leads one to God. Certainly he is the sort of man who seemingly (with the exception of sports coaches) have this type of effect only at private schools. Perhaps this is unfair to hard-working public school teachers, but few Father Sillses are found in those bureaucracies.
Sills built one of the great prep schools of New England, but in his image. The standards were rigorous, the admittance difficult, but it was an egalitarian system in which each child’s parents consulted with the school, arriving at a tuition they could afford. Not welfare or affirmative action, but rather a relative payment schedule leaving each family with a sense of ownership. Kent modernized. It was ahead of the curve when it came to opportunities for minorities and eventually became coed, although strict about it.
Perhaps it is just Rinehart’s lyrical style, but reading his descriptions of Kent, its adjacent Connecticut surroundings, and their tony competition (Phillips Exeter, Andover), one is struck by a sense of jealousy. Again, the public school comparison or, more accurately, the fact there is none. The world Rinehart lived in was an extraordinary, gentleman’s environment of tradition and excellence, leaving the imptression that such quality is exclusive only to such bastions of . . . exclusivity.
But this is not a stuffy account of snot-nosed rich kids, which has frankly become a tired Hollywood stereotype often meant to deliver the myth that wealth, excellence and tradition are merely unearned privileges of a class of white males responsible for the rape and plunder of the dispossessed through time immemorial. No, not so at a school built by Father Sill, and most definitely not by young fellows under the tutelage of a tough, legendary coach named Hart Perry. The experience they had as teammates and competitors was no different than an extraordinary basketball team at a gritty inner city high school.
Rinehart’s back story begins with his family, an old publishing clan. Indeed, he was “chosen” to write this story, the suggstion made shortly after “that championship season,” because he was their “poet,” a teenage Shakespeare not above using the Bard to try and impress girls into “wasting their time with me.” The fact he was their most literate was not an accident, considering his pedigree, but even in this he throws a few twists and turns our way.
Rinehart was not super rich. His family indeed had founded Holt, Rinehart, but his own father was eccentric, a raconteur, hail-fellow-well-met type with a drinking problem. His parents specialized in throwing wild shindigs, which young Rinehart ruefully observed, manuvering his way around the revelers at a young age. Alas, his father, a talented writer, was not published and could be consiederd a failure of sorts, at least up until the time he sent Rick to Kent.
His parent tried to negotiate how much they would pay in tuition as did many of the middle class Kent parents, but were told this sprt of dispensation was not made for their kind. The Kent administration assumed they were publishing scions of wealth and privilege, saddling Mr. Rinehart with paying the “full boat.” Mr. Rinehart did not try to argue that, well, yes, the family had some imprimatur, but he was a drinking man who was not published. He just smiled, swallowed hard, and wrote the check like the gentleman he saw himself as.
Rick Rinehart arrived at Kent School in 1968. Located in once-rural Connecticut (he decribes it today as a “bedroom community” of New York City), Kent was the leading rowing tradition among American prep schools, a vision of Father Sills come to fruition. They were described as the “Notre Dame of American rowing,” engendering letters from the likes of President Franklin Roosevelt congragulating them on the glory they brought their school and America via their accomplishments.
But Rinehart had little idea about any of this. He was not from a rowing family. He fell in love with Kent, wanted to go there, and endeaviored to do so, but not to row. His single-minded focus on getting into Kent, however, led him to rowing with profound consequences. In order to make the grade for Kent, he had to repeat the eighth grade. With improved grades he was admitted. This made him a year older. In his last year (1972) the extra time gave him physical and mental maturity he needed to make the squad and compete. It also played some role in dealing with the military draft. He ultimately was not drafted as his number was 110, he entered college and the war ended, but Vietnam and the times play a back-drop to the story.
These were prep school boys of the 1930s. They were of the times, not naïve to the ways of the world. The year Rinehart enterted Kent, the North Vietnamese engaged in the Tet Offensive, President Lyndon Johnson declared he would not try for re-election, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. It was the age of Riuchard Nixon, of campus protest, of hippies, draft dodgers, angst and rebellion. By 1972, America was a fractured country, having turned to the right as a reaction to left-wing elements, but deeply scarred. That year was monumental in scope: Vietnam finally nearing its end, China opened up, Israeli athletes murdered in Munich, and in the samne month of their greatest competition, the Watergate break-in
A telling statement by the author comes when he decribes how today he cannot hear The Doors without being taken back to those days of yore. He fell not for the flashy, big-music sound of the English giants of the day (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin), but for an Irish-American poet, Jim Morrison, misunderstood then but with the exception of Pete Townshend, holding up today as well as any rock musician of the era.
Upon arrival at Kent, the author’s mother was struck by the symmetry of the rowers, and without knowing the skill or sacrifice involved, as if suggesting he take up bowling or checkers, more or less told him he would row. At first Rinehart tried other sports, all without success, until an event occurred that shaped his rowing future and life.
On a trip to Colorado, he engaged in a “hike” more reminiscent of Hannibal’s crossing the Alps. He was not quite on the verge of death, but the combination of physical exertion and deprivation from creature comforts over some 50 miles of Rocky Mountain terrain left him spiritually enlightened. It also told him he had the gift for endurance, a major pre-requisite for rowing. He entered the Kent rowing program. Rinehart is rather modest about his ascendance, but considering Kent’s repuation for the sport, and the fact the 1972 team was probably the best they ever had, his making the squad might be compared with a walk-on starting and blocking for Johnny Lujack of the 1947 Notre Dame Fighting Irish!
Rinehart’s experience in Colorado, his love of rowing, and his descriptions of the solitude of the water, help to explain his own life lessons. He apparently came from what might be described as “Manhattan dilettantes,” café society which, at the time, was embodied by New York Times film critic Pauline Kael, who said of Richard Nixon’s 49-state trouncing of Democrat George McGovern, “I don’t know how he won. I don’t know anybody who voted for him.”
The Rineharts were like so many fashionsible Manhattanites a John Kennedy family, but the survival in the Rockys, the competition of rowing, and his communion with nature, affected Rinehart’s work ethic-based political views and, more important, his lifelong love affair with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Finally, in the spring of his last year at Kent School, the time had come for the author and his teammates, who watched while skilled older rowers lived up to the tradition of Kent, setting the bar high for them. Under Coach Perry, they entered the rowing season believing they could be special. Competition after competition only convinced them they might be a team of destiny, and it is important to note that they did not merely row against local high school squads. They competed against Ivy League schools and programs from other states, like two public schools in Virginia considered among the nation’s best. In many cases they were, of course, high school age kids beating college boys, again drawing the comparison of De La Salle knocking off Ohio State, or Maryland De Matha beating the University of Maryland in hoops.
They won and won and won, eventually capturing the national title, earning them a trip to England to compete for the Princess Elizabeth Cup in the fabled Henley Royal Regatta, scene of two Summer Olympics (London, 1908 and 1948), quite simply the Mecca of rowing, to its sport what Wimbledon is to tennis, Augusta to golf . . . all by high school boys competing in large measure against grown men, many in their 20s!
Think of the “miracle on ice,” Chariots of Fire and Hoosiers rolled into one. They were a team, of destiny, capturing the cup in a series of astonishing victories. Rinehart tells us several of his teammates went on to success in college, but none rowed in the 1976 Montreal Olympics. They were talents, but what apparently propelled this particular team to heights not accomplished by groups of comparable ability was a magic quality of coordination and team chemistry, of which greatness is born. So it was as they won the 1972 Princess Elizabeth Cup in a competition televized nationally in Great Britain, announced by Grave Kelly’s father, Kelly Kelly (one of the great rowers in history), earning for them a letter from President Nixon.
Like the aforementioned films, Men of Kent would make a beautiful movie. It is a coming of age, patriotic, spiritual story of innocence and joy, of boys who became not just men, but gentle men, and I loved it.
THE POWERS THAT BE
Wow. The Powers That Be by David Halberstam, written after some seven years of research, in 1979, is the quinetessiantal big book . . . the big American book! It is a masterpiece, a triumph, a work, a magnum opus by a superstar of the genre. I do not stand eye-to-eye with Halberstam politically. I am a staunch conservative, he was center-liberal, but unlike so many nabobs of the left, in Halberstam’s case his sheer knowledge, his education, his talent, passion, and the undisputable fact that he was there . . . he saw it happen, he experienced it; well, whether one agrees or disgrees with his politics or not, only a fool would argue his merits, his imprimatur.
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